League of Legends World Championship Recap

Warning: Spoilers ahead! (For those who haven’t yet watched Worlds and are going to watch the replay).

As expected by many commentators, players, and youtubers alike, SKT T1 has emerged victorious for their third time winning the League of Legends World Championship.

This world final was between SK Telecom T1 (SKT T1) and Samsung Galaxy (SSG), where SKT were competing for their 3rd Championship win. The event opened with the remix of Zedd’s ‘Ignite’ accompanied by a whole orchestra, holographic visuals and the announcement of the teams.

What was unexpected, however, was the manner in which it happened. I, like many others, believed that the finals was going to be SKT T1 destroying their opponents in a 3-0 victory in the best of 5. What actually happened was a 5 game series, the first time this has ever happened during a grand final in the 7 years that the Championships have been running.

Game 1

The first game was close with a few deciding factors contributing to SKT’s victory. SKT managed to get both of the nexus turrets due to super minions, forcing SSG to play far more defensively. SSG defends, manage to get Baron and push up to the enemy base. SKT turns it around by taking Elder Dragon, and Faker jumps in and removes Crown’s Viktor from existence. Ruler crits Faker out from the game, and promptly gets 4th shot by Bang on Jhin. With their damage gone, SSG loses to SKT in this last fight and SKT win the game straight off of it.

Game 2

The second game began fairly evenly, with most kills having an answering kill. Then SKT T1 took off, and started getting many kills without any response from SSG, who were constantly being caught out. Some of these were due to lack of vision, and some of these due to mistakenly engaging. The game finished with a kill score of 20-3, where those 3 kills occurred within only the first 12 minutes of a 31 minute game. SKT T1 snowballed out of control and just dominated until they could comfortably push in, remove the inhibitor, and destroy SSG’s nexus, while picking up an extra 2 kills.

Game 3

After being stomped in the second game, it was a pleasant surprise in the third game when SSG turned around after looking so dejected at their 2-0 losses to claim victory. SKT seemed to be in control and about to beat SSG at 28 minutes, with a 10k gold lead. However, at this time SKT attempts to take dragon, and are engaged on by SSG, who then make short work of Faker, Wolf and Bengi and take the Baron, which became the turning point of this game. This fight, along with their superior dragon control (they had four of the dragons) meant that SKT also had to focus to ensure that SSG never got the Elder Dragon because while Elder Dragon did not give enough of a boost to SKT, it would be